1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to controlling update access to databases, and more particularly, to monitoring and checking the status of database jobs and automatic rerunning of any job failures.
2. Description of Related Art
In a typical, large data processing facility with local and remote networked databases, jobs of work are submitted to update a plurality of databases. The number of these jobs can be very large as almost all aspects of the business are documented or controlled by the information contained in these databases. Many of the database jobs are critical to the day-to-day running of the business. Also, the sequence in which these jobs are run is important as one job can require the updated data from another job. A job run out of sequence can cause a serious loss of data that can take hours to correct or if not detected, incorrect data results that can cause serious harm to the business.
To ensure that jobs are run in sequence, elaborate procedures are put in place to make sure prerequisite jobs are completed before the dependent job is started. Operating system error logs and stop-on-error features are used to detect failed jobs and can frequently alert the dependent jobs not to start. This prevents most serious problems from occurring but can leave a large number of jobs not run until the error is corrected and the jobs are all resubmitted.
There can be numerous reasons why jobs fail to run or are not complete. It could simply be because access to the database was temporarily lost over the network or because the detection of a serious programming or data error caused the job to fail. In these cases, the operating system logs the job failures. Database Administrators (DBAs) monitor jobs for these failures. They must analyze failures and take corrective action to get the job run and repair any data which may have been effected by it or subsequent jobs.
DBAs spend a significant amount of time monitoring and taking corrective action because of the modern complexity of the numerous databases. Frequently, many databases are connected remotely over networks. Access privileges to all the databases must be given to the DBAs since they may need to get to them to restore damaged data or to check if the data is correct. This is a large security exposure to most companies.
Several methods or systems related to database access and control are available. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,982,890 (Akatus) a method and system for detecting fraudulent data updates is described. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,721,904 (Ito et al.) a database access system for distributed systems is explained. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,420 (Davies) an alarm-monitoring server system, apparatus, and process are described.
The high probability of data damage due to database job errors requires extensive job monitoring by DBAs. This is very costly, error prone, and a security risk. It requires the new approach of this invention.